[Evergreen-general] Planning the next EG Offline Interface

Miller, Jeremy Jeremy.Miller at cityofalbany.net
Mon Mar 14 15:23:01 EDT 2022 

With an automatic “seamless” sort of solution, I would want the ability to exercise some control over it.

Just because it can manage to talk to the server for a moment, doesn’t necessarily mean it should be considered up and ready to start accepting inbound offline transactions.

Generally speaking, once a system is back up I want to do a little bit of testing first to be sure of the complete status of everything, before telling staff to go ahead.  Wouldn’t want clients auto-dumping transactions at it before I’ve confirmed we’re ready for that.  (Thinking about upgrade-related outages, mostly.)

Perhaps something as simple as “this file with these contents must be found present on server before sending transactions” would take care of that.  (On my end, the file would be renamed/unavailable to the clients, or have negative contents, until deemed ready to go.)

Also… I’d prefer the current mechanisms for managing them to be retained, as the ability to control what is going on there is useful.  Rather than just send transactions (the way a selfcheck queues up sip requests when offline, to later send them when back on)… just automate the upload of transaction files into queue(s) for processing.  Basically the same thing that happens now, only removing the need for staff (or visit by admin) to upload them.   I agree, that’d be great.  While retaining the ability to reject (or modify) them, if necessary for some reason.  Or even to just verify that yes, these are legit transactions that happened while offline for x amount of time on this day at this location, and to look them over, before automatically accepting a load of data for import as transactions.  Would just need a standardized organization & naming scheme for auto-uploads & their queues to follow.

I love automatic stuff, as long as there are some reins or gates available for managing it.

Summarizing the logic..


  1.  If running in offline mode, check every x amount of time for return of connectivity.
  2.  Once connectivity has returned, check every x amount of time for presence of “ok to proceed” on server.
  3.  Once presence of “ok to proceed” found on server, check for presence of “auto upload queue” for correct org unit and date (something like that).
  4.  If found, use it… if not found, create it then use it.
  5.  Upload offline transaction file to that queue, inform the user that it has successfully done so.  Maybe notify a designated user that there are offline transactions awaiting review/processing.

At least that’s how I’m currently picturing such a thing in my head.  Might be workable whether a completely transparent thing in the web client, or an independent/local offline app.  (I have a slight preference in that direction.  Maybe it could inform you when “your system is back online, click here when you’re ready to upload your transactions and return to the web client”.)


--------------------------------------
Jeremiah Miller  | 503-507-9258 (cell)
Sysadmin | Albany Public Library
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From: Evergreen-general <evergreen-general-bounces at list.evergreen-ils.org> On Behalf Of Joe Knueven via Evergreen-general
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2022 11:02 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>
Cc: Joe Knueven <joe at wilmington.lib.oh.us>
Subject: Re: [Evergreen-general] Planning the next EG Offline Interface


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I think I would side towards staff either needing to click through a warning that they are entering offline mode or having to open a separate program, as I basically agree with what Michele Morgan said earlier.  I think either would be a useful reminder that this isn't something that should be done because their connection timed out once.

I would also add a +1 to Michele's suggestion of it being seamless.  (ie the interface uploads transactions when a connection is available without human assistance)  I would rather the system upload the transactions that work and then dump a report to the local admin about transactions that failed.  For security, such notice could be generic ("some offline transactions from station [EG WORKSTATION NAME] failed to load at [TIMESTAMP]") and the detailed info kept inside EG, but accessible in such a way that the local admin could sit at their computer and make those manual corrections rather than going around to every workstation.

In addition to making it easier for the local/consortium admins to manage these situations, I think this would be useful for all staff/improve customer service since I've seen where in the stress of dealing with an ILS down/internet down/power outage that staff who do not know how to load offline transactions will not remember to tell anyone that they used the interface and the transactions get found (hopefully) the next day by someone who know what to do with them.

Have a good day.

Joe

Joe Knueven, Director
Wilmington Public Library
268 N South Street
Wilmington, OH 45177
937-382-6165 x101 (direct)
937-382-2417 (public)




---- On Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:37:32 -0400 Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote ----

Just to clarify one point, staff can access the current Evergreen offline interface at any time.  The PC does not have to be offline.  Just go to Circulation => Offline Interface and select one of the action tabs (Checkout, Renew, etc.).  They work fine.

-b

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:31 PM Diane Disbro via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
Thank you all for working on this! Front line staff will really appreciate it.

Diane Disbro
Pronouns: she/her
Circulation Coordinator
Scenic Regional Library
251 Union Plaza Drive
Union, MO 63084
(636) 583-0652 ext  110
ddisbro at scenicregional.org<mailto:ddisbro at scenicregional.org>



On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:17 PM Morgan, Michele via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
Since it's Pi Day, I'm just tossing out a pie in the sky idea about this.

It would be great if offline circulation could be seamless, or nearly so. Many selfcheck kiosks have this feature. They continue to record transactions when the ILS goes offline, and automatically send them when connectivity restores.

I can't offer any suggestions as to how to accomplish this, but it would be awesome!

But given Bill's original question, there are merits to an installed application, a few that come to mind are:

  *   Better control over where it's installed.
  *   The ability to install it when a workstation is offline.
  *   Easier to train staff since it can be invoked at any time.
Still hoping for Pi in the sky, though.

Michele

--
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On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 1:04 PM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
Thanks for all the input, everyone.

JFYI, I chose JavaFX for my experiments because:

1. Hatch uses it, duh, specifically for HTML rendering of print content.
2. It's cross-platform
3. JavaFX has its own markup language (FXML), which comes with a handy "scene builder" for quickly creating/editing UI's.
4. Companies outside of Oracle, like Microsoft [1] and Amazon [2], are now creating open source builds of OpenJDK.

I'm open to other technologies, though.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/java/openjdk/download
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2faws.amazon.com%2fcorretto%2f&c=E,1,SbW6VQy3AyAKjN2zmRiJkKAyjI4xjN8T-lR7JsuNAgfcz56tB84L-V0jVoBVgOTFAQGbUrWDJca1UqRTDCnKBcrRdHY3V1TtYeruo04aEyx7Ww,,&typo=1>

-b


On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 12:18 PM Jason Boyer via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
I do like the idea of an installed application. If there is any issue getting the offline webapp to work staff generally use Excel or Notepad anyway, so something purpose built would be a big step up from that. These (tried and true, long-term battle tested, heh) alternatives show that a dedicated offline utility wouldn’t be required to use Evergreen, just a major UI / UX improvement over some of the alternatives.

The main issue with the existing offline interface is that if anything answers on port 80 at all you can’t get into it. So if you have an ldirectord fallback (for a maintenance page, for instance) the only way to get into offline is basically to unplug the cable from the staff machine and try again. The background download of block lists and other assorted settings is also a great idea. Saving things to a system-wide location (like %APPDATA% on Windows) will also prevent libraries with per-user OS accounts from accidentally finding and uploading old transactions long after they were saved.

Making it safer for staff to wipe out their Chrome history is also a good benefit. (Hopefully they don’t often need to anyway, but making it impossible to lose pending circs this way is an unqualified improvement.)

Searching around a bit for other systems shows a variety of options:
Alma, Atriuum, and Sierra use a locally installed utility.
Aleph, and Symphony still use locally installed clients that also handle offline circ.
FOLIO doesn’t handle it.
Polaris has a browser offline client.

Koha can use a browser offline client, FF plugin, or locally installed utility. I haven’t done a deep dive, but I’ve been given the impression from some email list postings that the local util is generally preferred. I don’t know the current status of the plugin, but requiring a specific browser definitely limits its appeal.

As for specific technologies, I’m like Jeff; we don’t want another Dojo situation, but am otherwise fairly open. I haven’t messed with Java much since college but if we want something that’s cross platform that’s pretty much the choice. I’m not familiar enough with JavaFX to know what additions the FX brings and so don’t have an opinion on that yet.

Jason

--
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On Mar 11, 2022, at 12:23 PM, Jeff Davis via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:

My other concern about a standalone app would be picking a tool that won't become obsolete in a few years (XUL, old Dojo) and doesn't require a ton of work to stay up-to-date (Angular).  I have no opinion on JavaFX specifically, but we are already using Java for Hatch, so maybe there is precedent?

I personally like the idea of a standalone app if it's easy to manage and use.  I think our staff have found the current offline UI to be unintuitive and kind of finicky.

Does anyone know offhand how other ILS products deal with offline?

Jeff


On 3/11/22 7:46 AM, Terran McCanna via Evergreen-general wrote:

My initial thoughts on a separate app:
Advantages:
 - A lot of staff tend to be confused by the concept of an offline web app and find it easier to understand an installed program.
 - It would get around the need to load pages into cache before using it for the first time, which staff don't usually understand.
 - It could potentially be installed from a flash drive to a computer that is not connected to the internet.
Disadvantages:
 - Staff would need to install it and do upgrades on every machine.
 - It would be more difficult to locally customize and it would create a separate product for the developers to maintain.
Questions:
 - How would it handle the workstation name? Would staff need to set it up at first use? (Note that it would be useful for it to have a workstation name that indicated that the offline app was used for each transaction so we could identify offline transactions in reports/logs.)
 - Would the staff client still be able to tell if there were pending offline transactions to upload? (Note that it would be nice to see this alert once logged into the staff client as well as on the login page.)
 - Would this resolve the problem of not being able to download large patron block lists? (PINES hasn't been able to download block lists at all since moving to the web client.)

Terran McCanna, PINES Program Manager
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On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 10:28 AM Bill Erickson via Evergreen-general <evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org><mailto:evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org>> wrote:
   Hi All,
   I'm thinking of turning my attention to porting the Evergreen
   Offline interface as we continue our march away from AngularJS.     Unlike other interfaces, where the end goal is pretty
   straightforward -- just migrate it to Angular -- I think the Offline
   UI would benefit from some discussion.
   I've long been a proponent of not requiring external software to use
   the browser client.  Once an EG server is up, just open your
   browser, and you're good to go.
   Hatch is obviously external software, but I don't consider it a
   requirement to use the client.  It smooths over some aspects of the
   workflow, but it does not provide functionality that can only be
   done with Hatch.
   However, I have also heard some comments in IRC to the effect that
   having a purely web-based offline interface may be causing some
   consternation / complications.   I don't recall the context or the
   specific concerns, only the seed stuck in my mind.
   Because of these conflicting ideas, I thought it best to get some
   feedback.
   Here I propose two options to consider that I think cover the
   extreme ends of the spectrum.  There may be middle ground or other
   options entirely.
   1. Create a progress web app in Angular that performs exactly as the
   AngularJS version.  There will be slight style variations and some
   differences to how the offline code is managed (Angular has a nice
   set of tools for progress web apps) as with the other Angular pages,
   but it would essentially be a direct port.
   2. Create a standalone application that's just an offline
   interface.  It would be a separate program you run on your PC.     Because I don't like showing up empty handed, I've created a proof
   of concept JavaFX app at https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx
   <https://github.com/berick/eg-offline-jfx> complete with screen
   shots.  (I can explain the choice of JavaFX later as needed).
   Both have pluses and minuses.  Before we get too into the weeds,
   though, I'm curious if there is an obvious direction people feel we
   should take, specific technology notwithstanding.  (Also, by all
   means, let's get into the weeds :)
   I welcome your questions and feedback!
   -b
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